People v. Ward

Defendant, James Ward, was convicted of murder of a four-year-old boy after a jury trial in the circuit of St. Clair County and sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment. He appeals, contending that the trial court improperly refused his tendered instructions on involuntary manslaughter and improperly excluded evidence of prior child abuse on the part of the deceased’s mother, Harriet Young, who had previously been convicted of the murder of the child. He also assigns as error certain prejudicial argument of the prosecution, to which his objection was overruled, that stated to the jury, in essence,…